Saturday, August 6, 2011

The Maw

I saw this on sale on Steam, and after reading the description, I thought it might be fun. I downloaded the demo, and that confirmed to me that it was fun. So, I plunked down the sale price of $4.08 for The Mawesome Pack, which includes the game and its three DLC levels that it refers to as "deleted scenes" that you'll play through as you go through the game (rather than at the end, or as a separate selection).

The premise is simple. You're some weird alien thing named Frank, and you have a purple blob with an insatiable appetite named Maw for a friend. As you progress through the game, you'll need to feed various things to Maw so he'll gain the powers you need to complete each level. The game is fairly straightforward in its layout, so generally when you can feed Maw something that will give him a power or change his power, it's time to do so.

The graphics are cartoony, and the game has the sense of humor to match it. There isn't any real dialogue to be had. The music is pretty good and changes when you use Maw's abilities.

As for length, it's fairly short. I beat it in less than 8 hours. I played for a bit over 8 hours going around doing things that I'd missed for achievements, though.

The control is pretty good. Mouse and keyboard are pretty proficient, but it plays better with a gamepad. Unfortunately, it wouldn't recognize my gamepad (a PS2 controller plugged in via a USB adapter), but thankfully, I solved that with JoyToKey. The game's page on the Steam store specifically mentions being compatible with Xbox 360 controllers, so if you've got one of those, you should be good to go.

This game isn't very complex, so there's not really much more I can say about it. If you can, go buy it before the 66% off sale ends on Steam (a bit over 4 hours as of... NOW!).